5 Jobs That Only Exist to Make the Modern World Look Dumber

No one worked in IT 200 years ago, and the world was better for it. An IT guy in 1814 would have been an idiot, way worse than an IT guy today. So it's to be expected that as times change, so will employment opportunities. Jobs crop up as society demands them, but that doesn't always mean those jobs are necessary. For instance, the world still has bathroom attendants, and there is literally not a job on earth less important than that. If you are a bathroom attendant, I want you to wear that as a badge of pride -- no one in the world offers less to society than you do, not even hobos, because they're not making every guy who takes a piss feel bad about himself.

Bathroom attendants aside, we have a small but impressive crop of jobs out there today that, as near as I can figure, exist only to make us all look dumb. They don't serve any other purpose than to make those of us who remember life even 10 years ago shake our heads and hope the zombie apocalypse is on the horizon to put us all out of our misery. These jobs are not just useless, they're stupid. Their existence is a hackle-raising affront to common sense and not being a dumbass. They're the sorts of jobs you can only qualify for if the reason you flunked out of DeVry had something to do with drinking Listerine and a donkey.

#5. Kids' Camp Packing Consultant

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Is this story from the New York Post real? I don't know. I refuse to look into the veracity of something so outlandishly fucktarded for fear it will open a Pandora's box of jellied brains that will immediately cause me to wet myself and tune in to Spike TV while I wait for a delivery from Popeye's. I can't take these risks, even for you, my devoted fans.

According to the story in the Post, there are some well-to-do moms in New York who are hiring professional organizers to pack for their kids for camp, because the idea of giving your kid a plastic bag with two pairs of underwear, some sunscreen, and a box of Twinkies is beyond the skill set of Manhattanites these days. So these organizers, for $250 an hour, will pack your kids' shit for you. Pro tip: I will pack your kid's shit for way less than $250 an hour. I will make a kid with you for less than $250 an hour. I will be your kid for less than $250 an hour.

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"Yo, when's feedin' time?"

The existence of this job is predicated upon not only your child being fundamentally unable to pack a bag of their own shit for a week away from home, but you as a parent being dumbfounded by the task as well. This leads people like me to wonder where you found the lamp that contained the genie that you implored to dial the phone for you to get a hold of this organizer in the first place and how often you get your head stuck in jugs around the house.

As part of the $250-an-hour job these organizers do, which can take up to four hours, they're packing 1,000 thread count sheets and spare shelving for the kids to use at camp, because these kids apparently want to be beat up by strangers but aren't sure how to say it with words.

No child wants to be the kid whose idiot mom hired a professional packer to send them to camp, because first, that requires acknowledging that your mom is an idiot, and second, that means that's $1,000 that could have been spent on literally anything in the world, from feeding homeless people to hiring a guy to fuck a Camaro on camera for a fetish video, that will forever be gone.

#4. Cuddle Club Attendant

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Hey, what the heck is a cuddle club? According to my research, a cuddle club is a club at which you cuddle. With strangers. Whom you pay.

Say you're feeling lonely today and you want human contact. Rather than following the lead of, say, your entire species for its entire existence, you can now go to a club and give money to a stranger whom you can snuggle up with in a non-sexual manner for a predetermined amount of time in an effort to deceive yourself into thinking you're worthy of human contact. How much does it cost to lie to yourself like this? Attendants make about $45 an hour, and the house gets a cut as well, but the whole thing sets you back $80.

So for $80, you hop into bed with an attractive stranger and you literally just sleep. On a scale of 1 to pathetic, this ranks a solid 9, with your parents changing their last name and not answering your calls at Christmas.

I understand the desire for human contact, even in a non-sexual way, but the facade of pretending to be someone's friend or however you explain this is all kind of head-shakingly sad. If someone can't find companionship on their own, we're not doing them favors by taking their money and pretending to like them for a few hours. It's like dishonest prostitution or something. That guy should use that money to buy a Fleshlight, or a crippling addiction to some kind of mind-altering substance. He owes it to himself.

#3. Artisanal Toothpick Maker

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Do you ever use toothpicks? I could be wrong, but I feel they're a little retro these days; you don't see them so often anymore. Maybe it's because they're fundamentally gross and in a strange way kind of like the yin to toilet paper's yang, just a weird little implement you use to clean one of your holes as part of the process of consuming nourishment. Maybe it's because flossing has taken off. I don't know, I'm not an ornithologist.

Despite the rarity of toothpicks these days, or what I perceive as rarity and will not acknowledge as otherwise, there's a company in Canada called Daneson that's making what can be best described as "What the fuck is that?" but can also be described as "artisanal toothpicks." Not familiar with the word "artisanal"? It means "overpriced artsy-fartsy shit." That's right from my desk dictionary. Daneson makes single malt scotch-infused toothpicks for $36. That $36 will net you four bottles, each bottle guaranteed to contain at least 12 toothpicks. Meaning you just bought 48 toothpicks. For $36. So $0.75 each. For a sliver of wood you use to poke jerky out of your teeth.

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"I keep this industry in business!"

Someone over at Daneson makes these toothpicks for a living. The website says this about them, I assume without irony:

To be clear, if you're not a scotch drinker you will likely not pick up on the subtlety of No16 because it is literally soaked in premium single malt then kiln dried leaving behind flavors deep in the wood of the toothpick.

That's a real thing. I wish I could write jokes that dry. If I could write jokes that dry, Stephen Colbert would avert his eyes every time he called upon me to help out on his show, which he would do every day.